Roadtripping through the South is an experience that I associate with empty Arizona cans, endless stretches of interstate, Spotify, the occasional Hostess Zinger, and my compulsive noticing and reading-out-loud of every passing billboard. After a couple hundred such noticings of these advertising relics, the thematic frequent fliers become apparent: ALL-CAPS fireworks-warehouse placements, PSAs of upcoming generic gas-and-food oases, phone numbers promising to chastise you out of eternal damnation (often abortion-adjacent), anti-balding serum promotions with “before and after” pictures of hairless men growing terribly thin-haired, and the occasional reminder that sex shops selling pornographic DVDs remain standing in valiant defiance of inexorable digital apocalypse.

While occasionally mountebankish, many of these billboard advertisements are imbued with the associative charm of small town America and “the open road.” Their transparent lack of persuasive power makes them endearing. They’re real, physical, localized. They feel more like “Small Business” than “Big Business.” There is something about personability and warmth that is almost impossible to scale, that is naturally abstracted away as a thing becomes bigger and more powerful and increasingly incentivized to exercise that power.

There is one billboard, however, that seems to gleam and rise spiritually above its baser counterparts. Its bolded yellow letters sit atop a black background. Below, the face of a 1950s-esque cartoon beaver, plastered with a manic bucktoothed grin, looks up and to the right in delirious optimism. “TOP TWO REASONS TO STOP: #1 AND #2,” the sign reads. “BUC-EE’s, 42 MILES.” You, the hypothetical roadtripper and Buc-ee’s uninitiate, are intrigued by its aura and figure that this place is probably as good as any for handling the necessary road trip action items (refueling, assorted bathroom activities, meandering and leg-stretching, the excessive purchasing of snacks, and so on).

You diverge onto the appropriate off-ramp, the cartoonish beaver logo reappearing to guide you, this time as the oversized, circular finial crowning the lollipop sign of an industrial park. As you pull closer, a behemoth of a lot grows before you: dozens of gas pumps, spaced out so as to accommodate even the most monstrous of SUVs and gratuitous pickup trucks. Behind these is a building that looks more like a Walmart Supercenter than a gas station convenience store. Families pile out of parked cars and shuffle into the megacomplex. Oakley-wearing guys — who you might suspect have dating profiles that heavily feature bass-fishing — haul ice bags and propane tanks, young roadtripping couples exchange eager words as they pass through the sliding glass doors of the vestibule, a hefty woman in a Mickey Mouse shirt ushers in her three chaotically swirling children. Some people pose outside with a stodgy, brass, anthropomorphic version of the beaver from the logo, thumbs-upping for Instagram shots.